Owners of the iPhone can now download Palringo’s (News - Alert) rich messaging service application from Apple’s new App Store and get picture and text-based messaging, and soon, vocal instant messaging.

 

Palringo integrates with several existing popular instant-messaging services: AOL’s (News - Alert) AIM, Google Talk, Yahoo! Messenger, Gadu Gadu, ICQ, Jabber and Windows Live Messenger. People can also use it to contact their friend’s using Apple’s (News - Alert) iChat.

 

“Just as Apple has changed people’s view of what it should be like to use a mobile phone, so Palringo aims to change the way people see messaging,” Palringo CEO Kerry Ritz said, in a statement. “Billions of people already use instant messaging on their home or work computers to communicate with each other. Palringo has added vocal instant messaging and picture messaging and has put IM on the iPhone (News - Alert) – that’s a great combination.”

 

Palringo combines walkie-talkie style voice (vocal instant messaging) with the ‘chat’ functionality of instant messaging and offers the ability to share pictures. Both one-on-one and group discussions are enabled, on any mobile network or connected PC.

 

With Palringo, people can stay connected to the most popular messaging services at the same time, without the need to switch between applications or use Web-based messaging services. In the absence of multi-media messaging service capabilities on the 3G iPhone, Palringo offers the ability to send and receive picture messaging using the iPhone’s data connection.

 

Palringo launches and connects in seconds, with a single screen tap. Palringo then presents a person’s IM contacts in a single, combined, or presence-aware list, whichever IM service their contacts are using. Sending a voice, picture or text-based message, whether to an individual or group, are also single screen tap operations.

 

Vocal IM, which is already available on all other Palringo-supported platforms, will be added in the second release of Palringo for the iPhone.

 

One megabyte is sufficient for Palringo to send/receive the equivalent of about 4,500 SMS messages, send/receive about 32 picture messages or send/receive up to 15 minutes of vocal instant messages.

 

The service is available worldwide on any mobile network or connected PC or Mac, which makes it attractive for multi-national corporate or extended family use. Palringo is free and easy to download and install from the App store.

 

As well as the iPhone, Palringo works on almost all models of mobile phones released in the last two years. For more information visit www.palringo.com.